Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

"Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?" Don't let the unwieldy title fool you - Dave Eggers' latest novel is short and snappy. Composed entirely of dialogue, it breezes through four days in the life of Thomas, a disillusioned sociopath who has finally decided to get some answers to the questions that are strangling him at night. He does this by kidnapping friends, family and strangers, chaining them up in abandoned bunkers at Fort Ord, near Monterey, and questioning them about the roles they've played in Thomas' disappointing life.

His first victim lays some interesting groundwork: Former college acquaintance Kev Paciorek is a tidy, clean-cut man who followed the grueling path one must take to become an astronaut: years of aeronautic engineering, years in the Navy, the whole time spent in the single-minded pursuit of a goal.

Barely had Kev become an astronaut than the government defunded the shuttle program. Now Kev's only hope for going to space is to pay for a backseat in a "s--ass Russian rocket" that will take him to the International Space Station - a glorified space kite. Clearly, the promise of NASA is dead.

Kev is stoic in his acceptance of life's twists, but Thomas finds the disappointment unbearable. It reminds him of society's other betrayals. He sees himself as one of those men who has always dreamed of grander things, who find the civilized world deeply boring, and whose dissatisfied energy ought to be harnessed and put to use on bigger projects. A thwarted under-mensch, Thomas blames the government and society for his failings. They ought to have found a purpose for him by now. Instead men like him end up homeless, or in prison, or in the military fighting pointless wars.

Although Thomas is unstable, he insists that he will let Kev go once they figure everything out. This is just about getting down to the truth. Two men in a bunker discussing Big Questions may seem a bit artificial, but the mise-en-scene is so startlingly plain - between the bare, gray walls there is only dialogue.

Eggers has created an appropriately Sophoclean space to look at Thomas' burning questions: Why does society prepare you for a life that doesn't exist? Why is there no grand, universal struggle? Why is there no purpose in life outside of individual needs? These concerns dance so gracefully into the discussions that you barely notice you're sparring with the existential heavyweights until one of them knocks you out.

Kev's stoicism irritates Thomas enough that he begins dragging in other victims. We meet Thomas' mother and his smarmy sixth-grade math teacher, Mr. Hansen, who may or may not have molested him. Hansen claims he was a pervert but not a harmful one, and while Thomas squirms at his very presence, Hansen strives to explain and defend himself, making a beautiful point about the importance of nuance and how it gets lost in a world of flash judgments and predictable narrative.

Perhaps most delightfully, we also meet former congressman Mac Dickinson. In a wheelchair after losing an arm and a leg in Vietnam, Dickinson's no-nonsense attitude, coupled with a deep compassion for Thomas, gives the novel a dose of folksy wisdom: Thomas, he implies, is young and spoiled, and there is a certain rule in life that not everybody gets everything they want.

But confronted with Thomas' urgent need for explanations, Dickinson does concede that the government spends too much time dealing with urgent problems and it doesn't look closely enough at the chronic ones, like Thomas and all the people who turn away from society's norms.

Eggers himself realizes that beneath every great rant about civilization lies a very particular rage, and he slowly unfolds Thomas' bete noire: the untimely death of his best friend, Don Banh, who was shot by police after a psychotic break. In the book's one misstep, Thomas "accidentally" kidnaps one of the cops who shot Don. But we're happy to have this victim chained up, because now Thomas can flush out the full story of Don's death.

This grotesque tragedy is the root of Thomas' pain, although his blunt-force effort at finding justice grates salt into the wounds that this book opens up. It also more than amply makes one point clear: Society should be doing things very differently.

This short, provocative novel feels a bit like Jack Bauer stepping into Kierkegaard's collected works. Lively and fast enough for the casual reader, it also ambitiously confronts a grand history of philosophical angst. While the book's literary kin might be Dostoevsky or Kafka, its kissing cousin is Walker Percy.

Thomas is a post-"Moviegoer" train wreck, desperately trying to answer the questions his Southern cousin tackled 50 years ago and coming to a very similar realization that sometimes the worst thing that can happen is nothing at all. Meanwhile, the train ride is swift and smart, and there is plenty of important stuff to consider along the way.